1. Field of the Invention
The invention is in the field of computer programming and more specifically in the field of text processing.
2. Related Art
Text processing and text correction features are found in a wide variety of computing devices. For example, spelling and grammar correction are found in most word processing programs, presentation programs, database programs, and the like. It is desirable to make text and grammar correction as efficient as possible.
In current correction algorithms a single mistake that involves two words requires two separate corrections. For example, “spellingm istake” is a single misplacement of a whitespace character but requires separate correction steps to correct both “spellingm” and “istake.” A similar problem occurs with mistakes such as “spelli ng,” which involves an extra whitespace character. In this case, a first correction step is required to replace “spelli” with “spelling” and a second correction step is required to eliminate “ng.”
Whitespace characters include a space, a tab, a carriage return, and the like used to separate non-whitespace characters. In some embodiments, these characters the ASCII characters represented by decimal values 32, 10, 11, 12, 13, or the like.